was just flying through pandaria and realized how much bigger it was
not counting the maw, I realized you could fit all four faction zones of shadowlands into one zone of pandaria easily
the pandaria zones also feel HUGE and spacious but still have tons of things to do
budget cuts that our new zones are now 1/4th as big?
I know bliz says they are ‘adding features to make the game feel bigger’ but shrinking the zones down to tiny portions of what they used to be doesn’t seem to follow that directive
44 Likes
Its not the size that counts…
14 Likes
You are oddly obsessed with size.
There is probably no underlying issue there.
12 Likes
To be fair I do feel that the Shadow Lands zones feel a bit too cramped. You can’t move two feet without tripping over a new group of mobs that are tied to a micro-area for a single WQ or something.
It does feel a bit oppressive at times. It would be nice to have some breathing room between the individual areas more. Though perhaps we don’t need Pandaria levels of distance between objectives. Not that I didn’t prefer Pandaria distancing to what we have here.
36 Likes
and all 4 shadowlands zones have more detail than any zone they’ve ever added so it trades off.,.
11 Likes
Mmm… I’m not convinced that’s true. If you spread it all out over a Pandaria sized zone I feel like you’d end up with roughly the same amount of content.
Do not mistake density with quantity. This is actually a very common tactic in gaming. If you take the same amount of stuff, but layer it in a tighter area, with height added, you create the impression of a denser, more active world.
That doesn’t mean you actually have more stuff, though.
15 Likes
Larger zones would have cost a raid tier.
10 Likes
Dunno, Bastion seems kinda big… not sure if you ever tried running from the top to the bottom without using the flightmaster.
Regardless, size doesn’t matter… it’s the quality of the content that matters most. and so far it’s A+ compared to the unspeakable previous expansion.
4 Likes
They probably don’t have the same budget they did back in MoP. I’m still impressed by what they are able to do despite the game not being as booming as it was.
And yet there is more per inch to do. Fantastic treasure chests and puzzles. Ways to unlock weird mobs. Its not that hard to get around to the dailies. STILL plenty of land to travel around in.
A pet peeve of mine is, “Hey, you want a big world? Here’s a ton of empty, useless land for you to waste your time in!”
The world feels PLENTY big. I find the zones beautiful and impactful. A bunch of empty land that no one really rides around in is pointless.
3 Likes
I dunno with the mob density not being a sin like it was in BfA the zones feel a lot more open and the scale is decent enough. They’re definitely smaller, but the density of things you can do with so little space is pretty impressive.
I do usually like the more sweeping swaths of lands and giant mountains that places like Storm Peaks and Valley of the Four Winds had; but I’m actually kind of enjoying exploring these new places. It feels like there’s a lot to find and I haven’t noticed the scale at all.
Back during TBC, I hated running the dailies in Netherstorm. Mainly because it took so long to get there. I could hit the shower or take a dump and my guy would still be flying when I got back.
So if you like large zones, go back to Outland and tell me how much better it is.
OP it gets down to what you want in an mmoRPG.
Do you want zones designed for gaming? with mazes for you to crawl through?
Or do you want a massive immersive world to explore?
Early WoW devs wanted to build a world. Todays devs want to build a game and it shows in their map design
8 Likes
feels lazy doesnt it.
maybe they just blame covid on this one.
2 Likes
Immersive and denser worlds isn’t exactly a mutually exclusive thing? Neither are worlds and game?
No, they’ve been doing it since WoD. I don’t know why you suggest they are gonna blame the virus for this. 
everyone does it. kudos to blizz if they dont.
its pretty trendy to blame covid for any lack of time/prep these days 
all the cool companies do it.